NPR's Morning Edition -- Giacometti Retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art Click to enlarge Dec. 17, 2001 -- To many, the sculptures of Alberto Giacometti have become icons of the anxious mood of the post-World War II era: Thin, solitary figures with long arms and legs, betraying just a hint of human form. The Swiss artist was one of the surrealists, but found fame with a style of sculpture that was completely original. Giacometti would have been 100 this year -- and in an appropriate gesture by the first museum to ever buy his work, the Museum of Modern Art in New York City is holding a commemorative exhibition with works from Giacometti's long career. David D'Arcy reports for Morning Edition that even now, what the artist's sculptures actually express is a matter of debate. Most art critics assumed that those thin figures were rising from the ashes of Europe after the Holocaust, embodiments of a worldview that came to be called existentialism.

Spoon Woman, 1926-27 Click to enlarge Giacometti himself often said they were his homage to the ancient Greek and Egyptian art he saw and sketched at the Louvre Museum in Paris. But many critics say it is the very ambiguity of the images that give them such power. Giacometti did not intend to become a sculptor when he began his art career in Paris. A few years before he died in 1966, he told a French television interviewer that he took up the form because it wasn't easy: "I did not want to spend my whole life making sculpture. I started sculpting because it was the art that I understood the least about. I should have moved on to other things that suited me better, but I couldn't tolerate the fact that I wasn't suited for sculpture. So kept doing it, so I'd get it out of my system." In a famous encounter, the head of the surrealist movement, Andre Breton, asked Giacometti whether any artist cared what a human head looked like.

Giacometti said, "I do." Point to the Eye, 1932 Mus�e national d'art moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. Click to enlarge That ended his relationship with the surrealists -- but the thin sculptures that began taking shape in Giacometti's studio still have echoes of the surreal, said Tobias Bezzola of the Kunsthaus Zurich, which collaborated with MoMA on the show. The breadth of the MoMA exhibit, with about 200 works from all stages of the artist's career, proves Giacometti's skill as a painter, too. In the last decade of his life, Giacometti turned to nature, concentrating on portraits, when the trend in art was abstraction. Six decades of Alberto Giacometti's work are on view at the Museum of Modern Art through Jan. 8, 2002. Search for more broadcast coverage on art museums . Other Resources  The Museum of Modern Art, New York has an extensive Flash presentation with examples of the art in the Giacometti exhibit , along with extensive critical notes following the progression of his career.

Alberto Giacometti - Bio, Facts, Family | Famous Birthdays Alberto Giacometti Libra Sculptor#4 About Swiss painter and sculptor who was associated with the surrealist movement. He created Woman of Venice II, a painted bronze sculpture. Alberto Giacometti: Existentialist Sculptor For a list see: Greatest Sculptors . Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) Cat (1954) Metropolitan Museum of Art. Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker, Alberto Giacometti is one of the most popular twentieth century sculptors . He trained initially in Italy, then in Paris where he was influenced by Constantin Brancusi and joined the Surrealism movement. His late-1920s and 1930s sculpture has been dubbed "still-life" or "magic objects", of which the most famous is The Palace at 4am (1932-3, Museum of Modern Art, New York).

In later years he returned to more realistic single-figure sculptures, notably his impossibly delicate, elongated figures, dating mostly from the post-war years, which he built up by working directly in plaster on a wire foundation. Examples of his unique style of sculpture include Man Pointing (1947, Tate London), Man Striding I (1960, Foundation Maeght, Saint-Paul) and Tall Woman II (1960, Museum of Modern Art, New York). Giacometti also painted a number of meticulous portraits, notably a five-year study of Isabel Lambert and Portrait of Jean Genet (1955). In February 2010, Giacometti's Walking Man I, a life-size bronze sculpture cast in 1961, sold at Sotheby's in London for £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) - the highest-ever price paid at auction for a work of plastic art . TYPES OF SCULPTING For different types of 3-D carving, see: For details of the origins and development of the plastic arts see: History of Sculpture .

Early Life Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, now Switzerland on the border with Italy in 1901. His father, Giovanni Giacometti (1868-1933) was also a painter, his uncle Augusto Giacometti (1877-1947) was a decorative artist, while his brother Diego became a furniture maker and sculptor. Giacometti attended the Fine Arts School in Geneva, studying figurative drawing, etching and painting. In 1920 he travelled with his father to the Venice Biennale to see the work of Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964), one of the great abstract sculptors from the Ukraine. Paris In 1922 Giacometti moved to Paris to study with the French expressionist sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1826-1929) at the Academie de la Grande-Chaumiere. Bourdelle was a former pupil of the master-sculptor, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917).

While in Paris, Giacometti experimented with new modern art movements like Cubism , and mixed with artists like Picasso, Max Ernst, Joan Miro and Balthus (Balthazar Klossowski de Rola). He also studied African art and primitive artefacts. Giacometti's Surrealist Sculpture Half way through the 1920s, Giacometti broke with traditional academic techniques and began to seriously explore the sculptural possibilities of Surrealism . From the period 1927 to 1934 he created some of his most individual works. Taking typical Surrealist themes like dreams, sensuality and violence he created sculptures, which though cast in bronze, look like assemblage art . His avant-garde works Woman with Her Throat Cut (1932, National Gallery of Scotland ) and Spoon Woman (1936) - casts of which can be seen in the Guggenheim and the Museum of Modern Art New York, and elsewhere - were his first critically acclaimed works. Woman with Her Throat Cut is part woman, part insect.

One of the most evocative pieces of abstract sculpture - intended to be placed on the floor without a base - it suggests the violent image of a woman, lying raped and murdered. It is highly emotive and powerful, sitting firmly within the realms of Surrealism, and made Giacometti one of the best known surrealist artists . In 1927, Giacometti had a joint exhibition in Zurich with his father and in 1932 his first solo exhibition in Paris. Individual Artistic Style In 1935 Giacometti had an artistic crisis. Although his early works were already well known and in demand, the artist was still struggling to find his own unique style. The first sculptures he did during this period were so tiny that they threatened to fall apart. Gradually the figures developed with more lively surfaces, elongated limbs and narrow small heads. It was for these, more naturalistic works, that he would become famous. Working from his studio in Montparnasse, his figures grew and grew in size. At first he found his studio too small, but the longer he stayed there, the larger he said, it seem to become.

Even one of his life-size standing figures, such as Man Striding (1960, Foundation Maeght, Saint-Paul) were created in this studio. In 1934 Giacometti had his first solo exhibition in New York. A few later he also met the famous philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, who became a good friend and wrote two essays about the artistic impact of Giacometti's art. During the war years, Giacometti lived in Zurich, only returning to his studio in Paris again in 1945. Note About Sculpture Appreciation To learn how to evaluate semi-abstract modernist sculptors like Alberto Giacomettil, see: How to Appreciate Modern Sculpture . For earlier works, please see: How to Appreciate Sculpture . Mature Works In 1948 Giacometti held another exhibition in New York, where he presented his new elongated figures. Conceptually, his sculptures were regarded as representing the fragile, essentially lonely nature of human existence.

Sartre associated it with Existentialism's pessimistic view of the world, but it was perhaps Barnett Newman's comment that was more accurate: these sculptures look 'as if they were made out of spit - new things with no form, no texture, but somehow filled'. The figure of a man striding was Giacomettis most common motif, and those figures show his fascination with the surfaces of his work. He used his fingers and the modelling knife to shape his figurative sculptures. (For an example of an Irish sculptor influenced by Giacometti's work, see Edward Delaney , 1930-2009.) Though the figures are often pared down to their basic form, they retain an extraordinary presence. Around the 1950s, Giacometti modelled groups of figures: The Square (1949) and The Glade (1950). In 1955 the artist had two retrospectives, one in London and one in New York. In 1956 he exhibited at the Venice Biennale. Although he is best known for his sculpture, Giacometti was also adept at etching , graphic design and painting.

In fact, he received the Guggenheim International Award for painting in 1964. Final Years By now acclaimed as one of the giants of modern art , Giacometti worked prolifically until this death in 1966. Commissions for public sculpture however tended to come to nothing, but in 1961 he made a tree for the stage of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. In 1961 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale, which bought him worldwide fame. Despite the fame, Giacometti was rarely satisfied with his work - he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later. Sartre was to remark of his friend 'He will never be finished with it; this is simply because a man is always beyond what he has done'. Despite declining health, the sculptor travelled to New York in 1965 to attend an opening of his work at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) . He died a few months later in Switzerland.

World Record Price For a Work of Art In February 2010 a record-setting art auction at Sotheby's London resulted in a £65,001,250 ($104,327,006) sale for Giacometti's sculpture Walking Man I (L'Homme Qui Marche). The 6-feet tall bronze depicts a man in mid-stride. The sale broke the previous $104,168,000 auction record, set in 2004 for Pablo Picasso's portrait Boy With a Pipe (1905). More than five times higher than its pre-sale estimate of £12m-18m, competitive bidding and scarcity of works by Giacometti were key factors in achieving the record price. The Alberto Giacometti Foundation The Kunsthaus Zurich contains the collection of the Alberto Giacometti Foundation. Collated shortly after the death of the artist, the collection contains 150 sculptures, 20 paintings and many paper drawings.

The works range from his early years, showing influences of Cubism and primitive art, his Surrealistic phase, and his most significant sculptures from the years 1947 to 1951. Works include: - Femme couchée qui rêve (1929, Cubist influence) - Fleur en danger (1932, Surrealist period) - Le Cage (1950, mature work) - Tête d'homme I (Diego, 1964, painting) Other Collections Works by Giacometti can also be found in the following museums: USA - Museum of Fine Arts, Boston - Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio - Palm Springs Desert Museum, California - San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, California - Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, Connecticut - Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois - Detroit Institute of Art, Michigan - Walker Art Center, Minnesota - Princeton University Art Museum, New Jersey - Guggenheim Museum, New York - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City - Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas, Texas - Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington DC. - National Gallery of Art, Washington DC.

Europe - Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, Vienna, Austria - Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark - Didrichsen Art Museum, Helsinki, Finland - National Museum of Modern Art, Centre Pompidou, Paris, France - State Museums of Berlin, Germany - Stadel Museum, Frankfurt, Germany - Von der Heydt-Museum, Wuppertal, Germany - Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice, Italy Alberto Giacometti on ArtStack - art online Early life[ edit ] Alberto Giacometti at the 31° Venice Biennale in 1962, photographed by Paolo Monti (Fondo Paolo Monti, BEIC ) Giacometti was born in Borgonovo , now part of the Switzerland municipality of Bregaglia , near the Italian border. He was a descendant of Protestant refugees escaping the inquisition . Alberto attended the Geneva School of Fine Arts . His brothers Diego (1902–85) and Bruno (1907–2012) would go on to become artists as well.

Additionally, Zaccaria Giacometti , later professor of constitutional law and chancellor of the University of Zurich grew up together with them, having been orphaned at the age of 12 in 1905. [1] In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle , an associate of Rodin . It was there that Giacometti experimented with cubism and surrealism and came to be regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors. Among his associates were Miró , Max Ernst , Picasso , Bror Hjorth and Balthus . Between 1936 and 1940, Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the sitter's gaze. He preferred models he was close to, his sister and the artist Isabel Rawsthorne (then known as Isabel Delmer). This was followed by a phase in which his statues of Isabel became stretched out; her limbs elongated. [2] Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation.

A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, "he would make your head look like the blade of a knife". After his marriage to Annette Arm in 1946 his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti said that the final result represented the sensation he felt when he looked at a woman. His paintings underwent a parallel procedure. The figures appear isolated and severely attenuated, as the result of continuous reworking. Subjects were frequently revisited: one of his favorite models was his younger brother Diego Giacometti . [3] A third brother, Bruno Giacometti , was a noted architect. Current 100 Swiss Franc banknote, front Current 100 Swiss Franc banknote, back Three Men Walking II, 1949, painted bronze sculpture Metropolitan Museum of Art . "The surfaces of Three Men Walking (II), 1949, typify his technique." [4] In 1958 Giacometti was asked to create a monumental sculpture for the Chase Manhattan Bank building in New York, which was beginning construction.

Although he had for many years "harbored an ambition to create work for a public square", [5] he "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper ", according to his biographer James Lord. [6] Giacometti's work on the project resulted in the four figures of standing women—his largest sculptures—entitled Grande femme debout I through IV (1960). The commission was never completed, however, because Giacometti was unsatisfied by the relationship between the sculpture and the site, and abandoned the project. In 1962, Giacometti was awarded the grand prize for sculpture at the Venice Biennale , and the award brought with it worldwide fame. Even when he had achieved popularity and his work was in demand, he still reworked models, often destroying them or setting them aside to be returned to years later.

The prints produced by Giacometti are often overlooked but the catalogue raisonné, Giacometti – The Complete Graphics and 15 Drawings by Herbert Lust (Tudor 1970), comments on their impact and gives details of the number of copies of each print. Some of his most important images were in editions of only 30 and many were described as rare in 1970. In his later years Giacometti's works were shown in a number of large exhibitions throughout Europe. Riding a wave of international popularity, and despite his declining health, he travelled to the United States in 1965 for an exhibition of his works at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. As his last work he prepared the text for the book Paris sans fin, a sequence of 150 lithographs containing memories of all the places where he had lived. Death[ edit ] Giacometti died in 1966 of heart disease ( pericarditis ) and chronic bronchitis at the Kantonsspital in Chur , Switzerland. His body was returned to his birthplace in Borgonovo, where he was interred close to his parents.

In May 2007 the executor of his widow's estate, former French foreign minister Roland Dumas , was convicted of illegally selling Giacometti's works to a top auctioneer, Jacques Tajan, who was also convicted. Both were ordered to pay €850,000 to the Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation. [7] Photo by Henri Cartier-Bresson Regarding Giacometti's sculptural technique and according to the Metropolitan Museum of Art : "The rough, eroded, heavily worked surfaces of Three Men Walking (II), 1949, typify his technique. Reduced, as they are, to their very core, these figures evoke lone trees in winter that have lost their foliage. Within this style, Giacometti would rarely deviate from the three themes that preoccupied him—the walking man; the standing, nude woman; and the bust—or all three, combined in various groupings." [4] In a letter to Pierre Matisse , Giacometti wrote: "Figures were never a compact mass but like a transparent construction".

[8] In the letter, Giacometti writes about how he looked back at the realist, classical busts of his youth with nostalgia, and tells the story of the existential crisis which precipitated the style he became known for. "[I rediscovered] the wish to make compositions with figures. For this I had to make (quickly I thought; in passing), one or two studies from nature, just enough to understand the construction of a head, of a whole figure, and in 1935 I took a model. This study should take, I thought, two weeks and then I could realize my compositions...I worked with the model all day from 1935 to 1940...Nothing was as I imagined. A head, became for me an object completely unknown and without dimensions." [8] Since Giacometti achieved exquisite realism with facility when he was executing busts in his early adolescence, Giacometti's difficulty in re-approaching the figure as an adult is generally understood as a sign of existential struggle for meaning, rather than as a technical deficit. Giacometti was a key player in the Surrealist art movement, but his work resists easy categorization.

Some describe it as formalist, others argue it is expressionist or otherwise having to do with what Deleuze calls "blocs of sensation" (as in Deleuze's analysis of Francis Bacon ). Even after his excommunication from the Surrealist group, while the intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. He once said that he was sculpting not the human figure but "the shadow that is cast". Scholar William Barrett in Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy (1962), argues that the attenuated forms of Giacometti's figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism that modern life is increasingly empty and devoid of meaning.

"All the sculptures of today, like those of the past, will end one day in pieces...So it is important to fashion ones work carefully in its smallest recess and charge every particle of matter with life." A new exhibition in Paris, since September 2011, shows how Giacometti strongly drew his inspiration for his work from Etruscan art . [9] Artworks by Giacometti at the 31° Venice Biennale in 1962 Exhibitions[ edit ] Giacometti's work has been the subject of numerous solo exhibitions including Pera Museum , Istanbul (2015) Pushkin Museum , Moscow (2008); “The Studio of Alberto Giacometti: Collection of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti”, Centre Pompidou , Paris (2007–2008); Kunsthal Rotterdam (2008); Fondation Beyeler , Basel (2009), Buenos Aires (2012); Kunsthalle Hamburg (2013), and the High Museum of Art , Atlanta (1970).

The National Portrait Gallery, London 's first solo exhibition of Giacometti's work, Pure Presence opened to five star reviews on 13 October 2015 (to January 10, 2016, in honour of the fiftieth anniversary of the artist's death). [10] [11] Art Foundations[ edit ] The Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti , having received a bequest from Alberto Giacometti's widow Annette, holds a collection of circa 5,000 works, frequently displayed around the world through exhibitions and long-term loans. A public interest institution, the Foundation was created in 2003 and aims at promoting, disseminating, preserving and protecting Alberto Giacometti's work. The Alberto Giacometti-Stiftung established in Zürich in 1965, holds a smaller collection of works acquired from the collection of the Pittsburgh industrialist G. David Thompson . Notable sales[ edit ] In November 2000 a Giacometti bronze, Grande Femme Debout I, sold for $ 14.3 million.

[13] Grande Femme Debout II was bought by the Gagosian Gallery for $27.4 million at Christie's auction in New York City on May 6, 2008. [14] L'Homme qui marche I , a life-sized bronze sculpture of a man, became one of the most expensive works of art and the most expensive sculpture ever sold at auction on February 2, 2010, when it sold for £65 million (US$104.3 million) at Sotheby's , London. [15] [16] Grande tête mince , a large bronze bust, sold for $53.3 million just three months later. L'Homme au doigt (Pointing Man) sold for $126 million (£81314455.32), or $141.3 million with fees, in Christie's May 11, 2015 Looking Forward to the Past sale in New York, a record for a sculpture at auction. The work had been in the same private collection for 45 years.

[17] In 2001 he was included in the Painting the Century: 101 Portrait Masterpieces 1900–2000 exhibition held at the National Portrait Gallery , London. Giacometti and his sculpture L'Homme qui marche I appear on the current 100 Swiss Franc banknote . [19] According to a lecture by Michael Peppiatt at Cambridge University on July 8, 2010, Giacometti, who had a friendship with author/playwright Samuel Beckett , created a tree for the set of a 1961 Paris production of Waiting for Godot . Notes[ edit ] ^ Andreas Kley: Von Stampa nach Zürich. Der Staatsrechtler Zaccaria Giacometti, sein Leben und Werk und seine Bergeller Künstlerfamilie, Zürich 2014, pp. 89 et seq.

^ New York Times article on The Women of Giacometti exhibition, Pace Wildenstein Gallery 2005 [1] Alberto Giacometti Biography, Art, and Analysis of Works | The Art Story Web Services & Hosting by The Computer Studio | Designed by DesArtLab Surrealism Surrealism Perhaps the most influential avant-garde movement of the century, Surrealism was founded in Paris in 1924 by a small group of writers and artists who sought to channel the unconscious as a means to unlock the power of the imagination. Much influenced by Freud, they believed that the conscious mind repressed the power of the imagination. Influenced also by Marx, they hoped that the psyche had the power to reveal the contradictions in the everyday world and spur on revolution. Existentialism in Modern Art Existentialism in Modern Art Existentialism deals largely with the complexities of individual human emotions, thoughts and responsibilities and the philosophy was widely used by various artist in the arena of modern art. Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud Sigmund Freud was an Austrian neurologist who in the early twentieth century founded the psychoanalytic school of psychology.

His theories on the human unconscious, arhcetypal forms and free association were very influential on many forms of modern art, including Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Primitive Art Primitive Art Nineteenth- and twentieth-century artists in the West were greatly influenced by art they deemed 'primitive' or 'naïve', made by tribal or non-Western cultures. Such art, ranging from African and Native American to naive depictions of the French peasantry, was thought to be less civilized and thus closer to raw aesthetic and spiritual experience. Abstract Art Abstract Art Abstraction from nature, objects, or figures has been common throughout the history of art, but it was not until the early twentieth century that abstraction was pursued for its own sake. From about 1913 it became a central characteristic of modernist art, and it continues to an important part of contemporary artists' repertoire. Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism Post-Impressionism refers to a number of styles that emerged in reaction to Impressionism in the 1880s. The movement encompassed Symbolism and Neo-Impressionism before ceding to Fauvism around 1905.

Its artists turned away from effects of light and atmosphere to explore new avenues such as color theory and personal feeling, often using colors and forms in intense and expressive ways. Symbolism Symbolism Symbolism is an artistic and literary movement that first emerged in France in the 1880s. In the visual arts it is often considered part of Post-Impressionism. It is characterized by an emphasis on the mystical, romantic and expressive, and often by the use of symbolic figures. Fauvism Fauvism Fauvism was an early twentieth-century art movement founded by Henri Matisse and André Derain. Labeled as "wild beasts", Fauve artists favored vibrant colors and winding gestural strokes across the canvas. Pointillism Pointillism Pointillism is a mode of art-making, first developed in 1880s France, in which all of the paint is applied to the surface as tiny points or daubs of color. Based on the laws of color theory, pointillism relies on the viewer's eye to mix the disparate dots into the lines, shapes, shadings, and color ranges of the full scene.

Cubism Cubism Cubism was developed by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque between 1907-1911, and it continued to be highly influential long after its decline. This classic phase has two stages: 'Analytic', in which forms seem to be 'analyzed' and fragmented; and 'Synthetic', in which pre-existing materials such as newspaper and wood veneer are collaged to the surface of the canvas. Man Ray Man Ray Man Ray was an American artist in Paris whose photograms, objects, drawings, and other works played an important role in Dada, Surrealism, modern photography, and avant-garde art at large. Joan Miró Joan Miró Active in Paris from the 1920s onward, and influenced by Surrealism, Miró developed a style of biomorphic abstraction which blended abstract figurative motifs, large fields of color, and primitivist symbols. This style would be an important inspiration for many Abstract Expressionists. André Masson André Masson André Masson was a French painter and one of the pioneers of Surrealism.

His practice of "automatic drawing" consisted of methodically supressing his conscious mind while creating art, thus allowing Masson to work from his subconscious. He was also known to work after long periods of forced hunger and sleep deprivation, resulting in quasi-hallucinatory images. Max Ernst Max Ernst Max Ernst was a German Dadaist and Surrealist whose paintings and collages combine dream-like realism, automatic techniques, and eerie subject matter. André Breton André Breton André Breton, author of the 1924 Surrealist Manifesto, was an influential theorizer of both Dada and Surrealism. Born in France, he emigrated to New York during World War II, where he greatly influenced the Abstract Expressionists. Louis Aragon Louis Aragon Louis Aragon was a French poet and writer, as well as journalist and editor for several revolutionary and avant-garde journals. He was involved with the Dada circle in Paris before helping found Surrealism in 1924. Henry Moore Henry Moore Henry Moore was an English sculptor and artist. He was best known for his abstract monumental bronze sculptures.

His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting reclining figures, or even more commonly, the mother and child theme. André Derain André Derain André Derain, the co-founder of Fauvism, was a French artist whose paintings exhibit the writhing energetic lines and bright colors characteristic of the movement. He strove to keep art modern and current throughout his career. Constantin Brancusi Constantin Brancusi Constantin Brancusi, a Romanian artist working in Paris, was one of the founders of modern sculpture. His abstracted animals, portrait busts, and totem-like figures revolutionized the traditional relationship between the sculpture and its base. Hans Arp Hans Arp Hans Arp (also known as Jean Arp) was a German-French artist who incorporated chance, randomness, and organic forms into his sculptures, paintings, and collages. He was involved with Zurich Dada, Surrealism, and the Abstraction-Creation movement. Pablo Picasso Pablo Picasso Picasso dominated European painting in the first half of the last century, and remains perhaps the century's most important, prolifically inventive, and versatile artist. Alongside Georges Braque, he pioneered Cubism.

He also made significant contributions to Surrealist painting and media such as collage, welded sculpture, and ceramics. Balthus Balthus Balthus was a Paris-based modern artist whose controversial paintings explored degrees of voyeurism, innocence, and childhood sexuality. Georges Bataille Georges Bataille Georges Bataille was a twentieth-century French writer, philosopher and poet. A fringe figure for most of his life, Bataille's writings dealt with ideas of mysticism, eroticism, human sacrifice, and deviant behavior. Despite a lackluster reception in life, his posthumous influence on writers and philosophers has been felt, and Bataille is now considered a key figure in the development of transgressionist literature. Constructivism Constructivism Russian Constructivism emerged with the Revolution of 1917 and sought a new approach to making objects, one which abolished the traditional concern with composition and replaced it with 'construction,' which called for a new attention to the technical character of materials. It was hoped that these inquiries would yield ideas for mass production. The movement was an important influence on geometric abstraction.

Divisionism Divisionism Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colors into individual dots or patches which interacted optically. Georges Seurat founded the style and believed it achieved the maximum luminosity scientifically possible. Isamu Noguchi Isamu Noguchi Isamu Noguchi was a Japanese-American modern artist. best known for his organic, biomorphic sculpture works, Noguchi was also a furniture designer and landscape artist. Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí Salvador Dalí was a Spanish Surrealist painter who combined a hyperrealist style with dream-like, sexualized subject matter. His collaborations with Hollywood and commercial ventures, alongside his notoriously dramatic personality, earned him scorn from some Surrealist colleagues. Leland Bell Leland Bell Leland Bell was an American painter and founding teacher of the New York Studio School. A contemporary of the Abstract Expressionists, his work nonetheless maintained aquasi-figurative, quasi-abstract style. Francis Bacon Francis Bacon Francis Bacon was an Irish-born, English painter and one of the twentieth century's most celebrated and controversial existentialist artists.

Bacon favored dark subject matter, often painting slightly abstracted, biomorphic figures, with bodies contorted or in the throes of madness. Painterly themes of Bacon's include the crucifixion, isolation and the mind's fragility. Bacon was also one of the few English artists of any prominence in modern and contemporary circles during the better part of the twentieth century. Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre Jean-Paul Sartre was a twentieth-century French philosopher, public intellectual, playwright, activist, literary critic and novelist. His name has become synonymous with Existentialism, the modern philosophy he popularized throughout his career. Sartre's writings, while vast, are characterized by his intense focus on matters dealing with human behavior, the Ego and "the Other." In one of his most celebrated works, the play No Exit, one of Sartre's characters boasts the famous line, "Hell is other people." Jean Genet Jean Genet Jean Genet was a twentieth-century French poet, novelist, playwright, auteur and political activist.

Originally a petty thief, vagabond and prostitute, Genet later became a darling of the avant-garde and radical left, and produced some of the century's most controversial and celebrated works of literature. Among Genet's best known works are the plays The Balcony and The Blacks, and the novel The Thief's Journal. Francis Ponge Francis Ponge Francis Ponge was a twentieth-century French poet and essayist. Ponge is best remembered for his essays and reviews that assume the form of prose poetry. Over the course of his life, Ponge was associated with the French Surrealists, the Communist Party, and the philosophical movements Phenomenology and Existentialism. Eduardo Paolozzi Eduardo Paolozzi Eduardo Paolozzi was a Scottish sculptor, printmaker and multi-media artist, and a pioneer in the early development of Pop art. His 1947 print 'I Was a Rich Man's Plaything' is considered the very first work of the movement. He was also a founder of the Independent Group in 1952. Alexander Calder Alexander Calder Alexander Calder was an American artist who made important contributions to abstract sculpture, hanging mobiles, and Kinetic art.

His work reflects both modern and Surrealist influences. Art Nouveau Art Nouveau Art Nouveau was a movement that swept through the decorative arts and architecture in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Generating enthusiasts throughout Europe, it was aimed at modernizing design and escaping the eclectic historical styles that had previously been popular. It drew inspiration from both organic and geometric forms, evolving elegant designs that united flowing, natural forms with more angular contours. Realism Realism Realism is an approach to art that stresses the naturalistic representation of things, the look of objects and figures in ordinary life. It emerged as a distinct movement in the mid-nineteenth century, in opposition to the idealistic, sometimes mythical subjects that were then popular, but it can be traced back to sixteenth-century Dutch art and forward into twentieth-century styles such as Social Realism. Neo-Expressionism Neo-Expressionism Neo-Expressionism began as a movement in German art in the early 1960s with the emergence of Georg Baselitz. It gained momentum, and drew in painters from Germany and the United States - often bringing artists back to painting as a serious and contemporary medium for artistic exploration.

Alberto Giacometti - Painter, Artist, Sculptor - Biography.com Alberto Giacometti At various times identified with Cubism, Surrealism and Existentialism, Alberto Giacometti used his sculptures, paintings and drawings to convey his unique artistic vision. IN THESE GROUPS Chur Synopsis Born in Switzerland in 1901, Alberto Giacometti received his early foundation in art from family members before pursuing formal training in Geneva and Paris. In the 1920s he began to develop his personal style, creating abstracted sculptures that showed the influence of Cubism and tribal art. During the 1930s he became a part of the Surrealist movement, with his work becoming more dreamlike in nature, but he later split with the group when he became focused on new ways to express the human form. Influenced by the emergence of Existentialism, his small, thin figurative sculptures resonated with the atmosphere of suffering that followed World War II, and they were soon highly sought after.

Giacometti’s work continued to evolve in the 1950s and 1960s, during which time he also produced an extensive series of portraits and provided illustrations for numerous books. After receiving several awards, honors and retrospective exhibitions, and achieving international fame, Giacometti died in 1966. Foundations Alberto Giacometti was born on October 10, 1901, in the small mountain village of Borgonovo, Switzerland, near the Italian-Swiss border. His father, Giovanni, was an accomplished painter who worked in the Post-Impressionist style, and both his godfather and an uncle were artists as well, providing Giacometti with his earliest instruction. When his family moved to the nearby town of Stampa in 1906, Giacometti was already showing an interest in drawing, and by his early teens he had begun painting, sculpting and making wood etchings. In 1919, Giacometti moved to Geneva, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and École des Arts et Métiers.

However, perhaps more important to his development as an artist were the trips he took to Italy during the next two years. In 1920 he accompanied his father to the Venice Biennale—where his father’s paintings were included in the exhibition and Giacometti first encountered the work of abstract sculptor Alexander Archipenko—and in 1921 he visited Rome, Florence and the surrounding areas, during which time he became enthralled with African and Egyptian art. Abstractions In 1922, Giacometti settled in Paris, where for the next four years he studied sculpture at the Académie de la Grande-Chaumière. At the same time, he was falling under the influence of Cubists such as Joan Miró and Pablo Picasso and nurturing his newfound love for primitive art, both of which began to show in his work, with his representations of the human body becoming steadily more abstracted. By the time he completed his studies, Giacometti was resolved to abandon realism entirely, convinced of its inadequacy to convey the essence of his subject matter.

Two of his most important and representative works from this period, Spoon Woman and The Couple, were exhibited at the Salon des Tuileries in 1927. In the early 1930s, Giacometti’s emerging style endeared him to some of the Surrealist movement’s most important figures, such as André Breton , Man Ray and Georges Bataille. Their influence on his work can be seen in such dreamlike, metaphorical pieces as Suspended Ball (1931), Walking Woman I (1932) and The Palace at 4 a.m. (1932). The impact of these and similar sculptures would lead to his first solo exhibitions in Paris (1932) and New York (1934). Heads Despite Giacometti’s growing notoriety as a member of the Surrealist movement, his personal inquiry into the nature of existence would ultimately lead him away from the group, and during the latter half of the decade he would focus his energies on a series of head sculptures meant to convey his own physical relation to his models in space.

However, with the outbreak of World War II and the advance of the German army into France, in 1941 Giacometti was forced to flee Paris and return to Switzerland, where he would work until the conflict’s end. During that time, his art would take yet a new direction, with his sculptures of the human for becoming elongated and thin and increasingly small in size, lending the figures an air of loneliness and suffering. When Giacometti returned to Paris, he soon found that the anguished presence of works like Man Pointing (1947) and City Square (1948)—informed by his grasp of the existentialist philosophies emerging at the time—struck a chord with the pervasive postwar feelings of despair and loneliness.

Now highly sought after by both museums and collectors, his work earned him solo exhibitions in New York in 1948 and 1950, one of which featured an introductory text by Jean Paul-Sartre , who described Giacometti’s work as “always halfway between nothingness and being.” Departures During the 1950s, Giacometti’s work continued to evolve, with his sculptures becoming larger, thinner, and more complicated. He also undertook a series of dark, intense portraits of family members—primarily his wife, Annette (whom he married in 1949), and his brother Diego—and well-known friends such as Jean Genet, Henri Matisse and Igor Stravinsky . Later in the decade he began a lengthy period of illustration work for books by contemporary authors such as Paul Eluard and revered writers of the past like Cervantes and Balzac . Internationally famous by the early 1960s, Giacometti was commissioned by Samuel Beckett to create a tree sculpture for a production of his Waiting for Godot, and in 1962 he was awarded the Grand Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale.

Amidst failing health, in 1964 he also received the Guggenheim International Award for Painting, followed by retrospectives of his work at the Tate Gallery in London and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. Alberto Giacometti died of cardiac exhaustion on January 11, 1966, in Chur, Switzerland, and was buried in Borgnovo cemetery. Swiss artist Alberto Giacometti in his studio, 1952. (Photo by Gordon Parks/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images ) Fact Check We strive for accuracy and fairness. If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us ! Citation Information Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) , Grande femme debout II | Christie's Grande femme debout II Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966) Grande femme debout II signed, numbered and inscribed with foundry mark 'Alberto Giacometti 1/6 Susse Fondeur Paris' (on the base) bronze with dark brown patina Height: 107 7/8 in.

(274 cm.) Conceived in 1959-1960 and cast in 1961 Contact Client Service New York +1 212 636 2000 London +44 (0)20 7839 9060 Hong Kong +852 2760 1766 Shanghai +86 21 6355 1766 Lot essay The series of four tall standing women that Giacometti executed in 1960, each titled Grande femme debout with numbers I through IV, are the largest sculptures he ever made. The present version, Grande femme debout II, actually holds the distinction of the being the largest of all: her height exceeds that of her next tallest sister in the sequence, no. IV, by a couple of inches; she is three inches higher than no. I, and a full sixteen inches more than no. III.

In the sheer scale of their conception these four giantesses stand at the other extreme from the tiny sculptures that Giacometti brought back with him from Switzerland when he returned to Paris after the Second World War; the latter were so miniscule that they fit into matchboxes he carried in his pockets, but they soon grew into the definitive and famous elongated figures of the late 1940s. "In fact, while he was fascinated by tiny sculptures all his life," Yves Bonnefoy has observed, "he also felt up until the end the need to challenge the darkness outside with these tall protective presences, either new versions of the Walking Man in 1959-60, of the Women of Venice of 1956, or the four Large Standing Women of 1960... Such works are indeed the deities that must protect the pyramid." (op. cit., p. 338). Giacometti executed the Grande femme debout sculptures in response to a commission which--had he completed it--would have certainly been the crowning achievement of his career and his most famous public work.

Giacometti was in his family home in Stampa, Switzerland, when he received word in December 1958 that Gordon Bunshaft, the chief architect and designer for the firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, wanted him to consider taking on a project for a building whose construction would soon get underway in the Wall Street district of Manhattan. Bunshaft's client was the Chase Manhattan Bank, one of the world's largest financial institutions. The sixty-story glass and steel tower that he was designing at 18 Pine Street would serve as the company's world headquarters. A large public plaza would adjoin the building, and Bunshaft, one of America's leading proponents of the International style, wanted to install there the first example of monumental public modernist art ever to be seen in the Wall Street vicinity. To choose candidates for the job, Bunshaft headed a committee composed of leading museum curators, including Alfred H. Barr, Jr., and Dorothy Miller (The Museum of Modern Art), James Johnson Sweeney (The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum), Robert Hale (The Metropolitan Museum of Art) and Perry Rathbone (The Boston Museum of Fine Arts).

They considered the work of Giacometti, Calder and Noguchi, and then finally decided to ask Giacometti to submit plans for a project. They hoped that Giacometti would come to New York, examine the site, and meet with them. James Lord, Giacometti's biographer, has pointed out that the sculptor "had never set foot in New York, and knew nothing about life in a rapidly evolving metropolis. Nor had he ever laid eyes on an actual skyscraper. Moreover, he had a fear of heights, of empty space, of the void. He liked to keep his feet planted firmly on the ground. But he was immediately responsive to the American proposal... Alberto wrote his mother of the project. It interested him passionately, he said" (in Giacometti: A Biography, New York, 1986, pp. 331-332). For nearly 25 years Giacometti had harbored a strong desire to create a work for a public square. Two earlier works suggest models of how he might consider placing elements or figures in a piazza environment (see lot 32).

The surrealist poet Louis Aragon recalled a discussion he had with Giacometti in the late 1940s concerning the idea of a sculpture in a public space: "At that time that meant a small figure, standing directly on the pavement where people walked, a very small figure with a wide space around it. [Giacometti] explained why: the smaller the figure was, the larger the square would seem--'larger than the Place de Concorde, no?'" (quoted in R. Hold., Giacometti: A Biography in Pictures, Ostfildern-Ruit, 1998, p. 160). Dieter Honisch has explained, "Giacometti felt that there was something imagined, rather than seen, about figures that approached life size, and he criticized this feature not only in the sculpture of Rodin and Houdon, but also in the paintings of Cézanne, Courbet and even Titian.

For Giacometti, it was more important, and also more realistic to work in terms of how an object appeared to the eye--and the more surrounded by space it was seen to be, the smaller it had to be and the more energy and concentration it had to have--than in terms of what one knew about it and what connected it with models in nature" (in "Scale in Giacometti's Sculpture," Alberto Giacometti, Munich, 1994, p. 67). Giacometti nevertheless realized that figures placed in close proximity to very tall buildings needed to be much larger than anything he had done previously. Bunshaft had suggested that he simply take one of his table-top sized figures and make it thirty times as large. However, Giacometti did not want the figures to dominate the square or completely dwarf passersby. Most of all he did not want to create a tall sculpture that impressed solely through its sheer size. The appropriate scale of the figures would continue to vex him. Although it would have been helpful to visit the Chase Manhattan Plaza site, Giacometti decided he would not go to New York.

He was normally averse to long-distance travel and, besides, he had an oil portrait of his wife Annette in progress and wanted to start a new bust of his brother Diego. Neither the importance of his corporate client nor expectations of the celebrity the project would likely bring his way seemed compelling enough to cause him to disrupt his dedicated and long-established work regimen. Bunshaft instead sent Giacometti a small scale model of the building and the plaza; the sculptor was accustomed to working in miniature. On 17 March 1959, Giacometti wrote Pierre Matisse, his dealer in New York: "I work on my project almost every day, and I am eager to take it up again tomorrow. In any case, and whether or not it's what the architect wants, it's of enormous help to me in all my work and I am delighted to be doing it" (quoted in J. Russell, Matisse Father & Son, New York, 1999, p. 332). By May 1959 Giacometti's conception of the project had crystallized in his mind. He would use the three main elements in his figural repertory.

As in City Square II (lot 32) there would be at least one standing woman and a walking man. In keeping with his current interest in working from the model, as he created his superbly characterized busts of Diego, he furthermore incorporated into his plan a large male head. Véronique Wiesinger has noted, "The upward motion of the woman corresponded to the horizontal motion of the man, and both were articulated around a fixed point of the head resting on the ground" (in The Women of Giacometti, exh. cat., PaceWildenstein, New York, 2005, p. 26). Giacometti started by making three tiny maquettes (fig. 1), and then quickly translated these ideas into full-size figures which he modeled in plaster (fig. 2). He wrote to Pierre Matisse, revealing the astonishing pace of his recent efforts: "Since I came back to Paris, I've worked all the time of the same big figure. On Monday next week, I shall start the other figures for the square. I want to have them all three done during the next week, directly and quite big, to see how they look, with their bases.

Foinet is going to find me somewhere--maybe a courtyard--where I can set them up. It has to go very fast, or not at all. But I need another eight days for work on the big figure, and maybe on a head of Diego that I began before leaving. This is the first time since 1947 that I have been able to start again, all over--something I'd hoped to do for a long time" (quoted in ibid., pp. 332-333). By the end of April 1960 Giacometti had completed the plaster models for four standing women, two walking men and two large heads (fig. 3). He then had the female and male figures and one of the heads cast in bronze. Giacometti told David Sylvester, "The two walking men are the only two remaining ones out of at least forty which were neither better nor worse... The four women too were the only remaining ones of ten; the others were destroyed." He explained to Sylvester that the figures were done "in a sort of nostalgia for large outdoor sculpture.

Anyway I had always wanted to know how large a piece I could do [this] was a good way of settling the question. I'm absolutely against the current practice of making small sculpture and enlarging it mechanically. Either I can make it big as I want or I can't And I should be interested to discover the maximum height that I could do by hand. Well, maximum height, that's precisely what the tall women are. They're already almost beyond all possibility, and in that case we're talking about something completely imaginary. But then it would become easy again!" (in Looking at Giacometti, New York, 1994, pp. 136-137). In contrast to many of his standing women, and specifically to six of the nine Femmes de Venise cast in bronze four years earlier, Giacometti opened up the space between the arms and torso in each of the Grande femme debout figures, allowing him to articulate a classic feminine silhouette, albeit in the sculptor's characteristic manner with a very narrow waist and wider but still attenuated lower abdomen and hips.

The pelvic region as seen here is roughly ovoid, and taken together with the figure's pendulous breasts, Grande femme debout II is as close as Giacometti comes in his work in creating a gigantic fertility fetish. Note the abbreviated gaps between the figure's legs, echoing the open spaces in the upper figure, which create an almost unbearable sense of tension in the lower part of the figure. These sculptures were a remarkable achievement. Giacometti, an unrelenting and compulsive perfectionist, was nevertheless dissatisfied with the results. Their scale had confounded him. They required a new way of working in the confines of his small and cramped studio that was unfamiliar and uncomfortable for him. James Lord has written, "It is true that large sculpture ideally pleads for unlimited space in which to hold its own. No sense of space entered Giacometti's studio. It was barely large enough for him to work and breathe in, barely, that is to say, life-size. Clambering up and down his stepladder as he worked, the sculptor could not possibly have had the same physical relation to them that he had had with all his other works.

So long as he had his feet on the ground, it seems he was able to keep his sculpture where he wanted it, but it got away from him when he had to get up in the air to come to grips with it. The four women are not possessed of the same remoteness or surrounded by the same numinous aura as the majority of their smaller sisters These four are excessively present in their presence" (op. cit., p. 419; fig. 4). Giacometti wrote to Pierre Matisse, "I've spent more than a year on them. I dropped everything else and kept at them. I have never worked so hard." He then made a telling admission: "The dimensions were totally confused. What I had seen as small, I mistakenly tried to enlarge. There were many other complications--far too many for a single year--quite apart from the fact that one can't possibly make anything for a given site without seeing the sculptures in place" (J. Russell, op. cit., p. 334).

He later told Sylvester, "I haven't solved the problem and I gave up the whole idea when I saw that if I was ever going to realise them I would have to devote myself to it for years" (quoted in D. Sylvester, op. cit., p. 137). Giacometti did not submit these sculptures for Bunshaft's approval. He decided on his own that he could not fulfill the Chase Manhattan commission. These commanding sculptures, however, took on a new life of their own, apart from their original purpose. Giacometti arranged a grouping of the male head, two walking men and two standing women in his pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale (fig. 5). He placed the same figures somewhat differently in an installation at the Fondation Maeght in Vence two years later. John Russell has pointed out that "He did not see the project as a setback, or as a failure, but as a liberation. And the project even had, in a limited sense, a happy ending, in that casts were made of more than one version of the Big Woman, the Walking Man, and the Big Head.

They do not call out for the Chase Manhattan building, but nowhere could they look better than in galleries of the Fondation Beyeler building that was designed by Renzo Piano and opened in 1997 in the outskirts of Basel (op. cit., pp. 335-336). The Chase Manhattan tower and plaza were completed in 1964 without its modern sculpture. Giacometti eventually made his first trip to New York, on the occasion of his retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in June-October 1965. He and his wife Annette sailed on the liner France, in the company of Pierre and Patricia Matisse (fig. 6). James Lord has written: "New York aroused him less to surprise than to excitement and curiosity. In the desire to orient himself as rapidly as possible, he bought a map of the city and studied it with care. In the taxi he wanted to make a detour to see the Chase Manhattan Plaza. When he found himself suddenly at the base of that tall, smooth, severe façade, he was at once excited by the prospect of trying to create a sculpture which would be powerful enough to maintain its presence there.

He walked with long strides in every direction back and forth trying to determine what would be the best site for such a sculpture. The more he gazed at that wide empty space in front of the building, the more excited he became. That same evening, about midnight, he insisted on returning to the plaza with his wife and a friend. He spent an hour there in the cold, deserted square trying to judge various locations and dimensions for the piece, asked his friend to stand motionless here and there to gauge the effect. Several times during the following day he discussed the matter with the architect, Gordon Bunshaft, returning once again to the site, and he talked often about it in New York and later in Paris" (op. cit., p. 190). Giacometti now envisioned for the Chase Manhattan Plaza a single standing female figure at least 23 feet in height. He had Diego prepare an armature, but his work on progressed no further, because in late 1965 he became critically ill. Giacometti died in January 1966. Four Trees, a painted aluminum sculpture by Jean Dubuffet that measures 42 feet in height was finally installed in the plaza in 1972.

While the lively organic shapes of Dubuffet's arbor contrast whimsically with the surrounding architectural grid, those who Giacometti's project might well imagine his tallest standing women, the walking man and the great head in its place, or to ponder how a single figure nearly two stories high, the sculptor's final conception, would have looked. No doubt, as purely a matter of size, anything Giacometti placed there would have been dwarfed by so much glass, steel and concrete, but the great woman would have dominated the space emotionally with heroic and monumental humanity. Dieter Honisch has written: "The sense of personal exposure; the meaninglessness of individual existence and in spite of that, its dignity, the unrelatedness of human beings, their isolation and their aimlessness; the inability to believe and accept ideals; the desire to survive, to find one's place--all this is especially forcefully expressed in the figures created in connection with the group envisaged for the Chase Manhattan Bank Plaza, the only larger than life-size figures of his entire career.

If Giacometti himself saw a meaning in this enlargement of scale, we can only assume this to have been the desire to create a monument that was not a memorial in the traditional sense: not an exaltation of the victors, but the victims, the maltreated and the nameless" (op. cit., p. 68). A-Unnumbered artist photo fig: Alberto Giacometti outside his studio at 46, rue Hippolyte-Maindron, Paris, in 1961. The plaster model of Grande femme debout IV is in the background. Photograph by Jean Mounicq/A.N.A. BARCODE 26015651 (fig. 1) Alberto Giacometti, Three Small Figures (Design for the Chase Manhattan Plaza), 1958-1959. Private collection. BARCODE 26015644 (fig. 2) Plaster models in progress of Grande tête and Homme qui marche I and I, in the artist's studio, 1960. Photograph by Ernst Scheidegger. BARCODE 26015590 (fig.

3) Plaster versions of a Grande têtes, Grande femme debout II and IV in the artist's studio, 1960. Photograph by Patricia Matisse. BARCODE 26015637 (fig. 4) Alberto Giacometti with the plaster version of Grande femme debout IV in the courtyard of his studio, summer 1960. Photograph courtesy of the Fondation Alberto et Annette Giacometti. Paris. BARCODE 26015620 (fig. 5) Alberto Giacometti arranging his pavilion at the 1962 Venice Biennale. The sculptures include two bronze versions of Grande femme debout, both versions of Homme qui marche, and Grande tête. Photograph by Ugo Mulas, Milan. BARCODE 26015606 (fig. 6) Alberto Giacometti arriving in New York about the S.S. France, October 1964. Photograph by Patricia Matisse. BARCODE 26015613 Cataloguing & details Pierre Matisse Gallery, New York (by 1961).

The Lambert Collection; sale, Christie's, New York, 12 May 1987, lot 20. Private collection, United States (acquired at the above sale). The Pace Gallery, New York (acquired from the above, 1991). Gasiunasen Gallery, Palm Beach (acquired from the above). Acquired from the above by the present owner, 9 December 1993. Saleroom Notice Please note that this work was cast in 1961. Literature J. Dupin, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1963, p. 290 (another cast illustrated). "Searching for a Kernel of life," in Newsweek, 14 June 1965, p. 946 (another case illustrated). P. Selz, Alberto Giacometti, New York, 1965, p. 72 (another cast illustrated). R. Hohl, Alberto Giacometti, Stuttgart, 1971, p. 309 (another cast illustrated, p. 260). B.

Lamarche-Vadel, Alberto Giacometti, Paris, 1984, p. 112, no. 157 (another cast illustrated). B. Rose, "Modern at its Meridian," in House and Garden, July 1986, vol. 158, no. 7, p. 32 (another cast illustrated in color). M. Matter, Alberto Giacometti, New York, 1987, p. 220 (another cast illustrated, p. 151; another cast illustrated again, p. 157). Y. Bonnefoy, Alberto Giacometti, Biographie d'une oeuvre, Paris, 1991, p. 407, no. 386 (another cast illustrated). A. Schneider, ed., Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Munich and New York, 1994, no. 120 (another cast illustrated). A. González, Alberto Giacometti: Works, Writings, Interviews, Barcelona, 2006, p.

118 (another cast illustrated in color, p. 119). Exhibited 'Man Pointing', Alberto Giacometti, 1947 | Tate Alberto Giacometti Object: 1780 x 950 x 520 mm Collection Catalogue entry Display caption Man Pointing was made very rapidly for Giacometti’s first exhibition in New York. He recalled: ‘I did that piece in one night between midnight and nine the next morning. That is, I’d already done it, but I demolished it and did it all over again because the men from the foundry were coming to take it away. And when they got here, the plaster was still wet.’ It was originally intended to be part of a larger composition, with the left arm positioned loosely around a second figure. Giacometti later abandoned the idea, and considered Man Pointing to be a complete work. Gallery label, July 2012 Alberto Giacometti 1901-1966 N05939 Homme signalent (Man pointing) 1947 Inscribed 'A.

Giacometti 3/6' on upper surface of base and 'Alexis. Rudier | Fondeur.

Paris' back of base Bronze, 70 x 35 1/2 x 24 1/2 (178 x 90.2 x 62.2) Purchased from the artist (Knapping Fund) 1949 Exh: Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture, Paintings, Drawings, Arts Council Gallery, London, June-July 1955 (15, detail repr.); Alberto Giacometti, Kunsthalle, Bern, June-July 1956 (18, repr.); XXXI Biennale, Venice, June- October 1962 (Giacometti 82); Alberto Giacometti, Kunsthaus, Zurich, December 1962-January 1963 (29, repr.); Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture Pantings Drawings 1913-65, Tate Gallery, July-August 1965 (33, plaster repr.); Alberto Giacometti, Orangerie des Tuileries, Paris, October 1969-January 1970 (48, repr.)

 Lit: James Lord, A Giacometti Portrait (New York 1965), p.34; Reinhold Hohl, Alberto Giacometti: Sculpture Painting Drawing (London 1972), pp.135-9, 302, repr.

p.117 Repr: Andrew Carnduff Ritchie, Sculpture of the Twentieth Century (New York 1952), p.210; John Rothenstein, The Tate Gallery (London 1958), pl.23 This is one of several sculptures made very quickly for inclusion in Giacometti's first New York exhibition at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in January-February 1948. Giacometti told James Lord in 1964: 'I did that piece in one night between midnight and nine the next morning. That is, I'd already done it, but I demolished it and did it all over again because the men from the foundry were coming to take it away. And when they got here, the plaster was still wet.' In 1951 he made a second male figure - very upright, with arms to the sides - as a companion piece, and the group was exhibited in 1951 at the Galerie Maeght as 'Groupe 2 Hommes' 1947-51.

The pointing man had one arm loosely round the second figure, and with the pointing finger was drawing his companion's attention to something in the distance. (Cf. Cahiers d'Art, 1951, pp.76 and 88 for photographs ). But whereas the pointing man was in bronze , the new figure was only in plaster. When asked whether he had intended a two-figure group from the beginning, Giacometti replied as follows (letter of 20 October 1953): 'As for the sculpture of the pointing man of 1947 I wanted from the start to make a composition of two figures, but when the first was made (that of the Tate Gallery) it was entirely impossible for me to make the second and I didn't even begin it. It was not until 1951 that I had the urge to try to make it and the plaster figure was exhibited at Maeght's in my exhibition of 1951. It was not what I wanted and immediately after the exhibition I destroyed the plaster figure which was never cast in bronze, it therefore no longer exists and I have since completely abandoned the idea of making it.

Therefore the first figure: the pointing man will remain on its own.' Reinhold Hohl points out that this sculpture is directly related to the 'Mannequin' of 1933 ('both describe space through a figure which marks the limits of its presence with an extended, space-encompassing arm') and that Ernst Scheidigger's well-known photograph of 'Man Pointing' standing at the intersection of the Rue Hippolyte-Maindron and the Rue du Moulin Vert (very near Giacometti's studio) gives the impression of a policeman on traffic duty - perhaps with Giacometti's consent. Published in: Ronald Alley, Catalogue of the Tate Gallery's Collection of Modern Art other than Works by British Artists, Tate Gallery and Sotheby Parke-Bernet, London 1981, p.278, reproduced p.278

Question: Albert Giacometti found fame as what?
Answer: Sculptor